BY Advocate.com Editors

May 20 2003 12:00 AM ET

8692News2003-05-20

Barnes & Noble sued over porn DVD mix-up

Barnes & Noble Booksellers Inc. is being sued by the family of a 12-year-old boy for a mix-up that left some copies of a skating magazine with a DVD featuring gay pornography. The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in second district court, says that the boy was horrified when he played the DVD on a television and found that instead of skating, it depicted an "aggressive homosexual pornographic film."

A copying error imprinted pornography on about 10% of the DVDs offered in a sleeve of Rejects skate magazine, editor Wes Driver told the boy's mother. Driver reportedly asked retailers to check and return magazines that had the errant DVD. "Barnes & Noble chose not to remove it," said the family's attorney, Jeffrey Gooch. "Our belief is that Barnes & Noble was certainly notified there was an issue and they chose not to remove the magazines."

Gooch said the boy's mother got "laughed off" when she complained at the bookstore and "little, if any, satisfaction" from Barnes & Noble corporate headquarters. New York-based Barnes & Noble declined comment, saying it hadn't seen the suit.

The boy, using birthday money, bought the magazine in March from a Barnes & Noble store in Bountiful, Utah. His family's suit seeks unspecified damages for his suffering, emotional pain, medical costs for therapy, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of earnings and earning capacity, special damages, general damages, and punitive and exemplary damages. The lawsuit is "the only way a little guy can make a corporation comment on anything in America," Gooch told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City.